Monday, June 25, 2012

Black Templars and 6th Edition Rumors Part 2

I’ve
kept an intentionally low profile on the 6th Edition speculation,
because previously I was awfully pessimistic.
I would rate my current outlook on competitive 6th Edition as
“Very Cautiously Optimistic.”

Without
going into a whole ordeal, I have a mere three gripes with everything I have
heard. However, what my gripes lack in
plurality they gain individual potential to ruin the game.

First,
I think allies have the potential to totally break the game. If the rules are handled properly it could be done balanced; but it’s far
more likely that allies will either be out of control, or never worth
using. I don’t know yet exactly what the
restrictions will be, but I can’t think of many ways that they would be GOOD
for tournament play. While they may not
harm it, they certainly can’t help it.
Even if the rules for allies prevent all broken combos, except one, that
one is enough to spoil the whole thing.

Second,
I think buying fortifications are super dumb.
Look at the all the drama around the blogosphere surrounding NOVA’s
terrain and how it matches up with individuals’ conceptions of how 40k terrain
should be. Terrain is, clearly, a very
touchy issue and incredibly difficult to balance. So any rule that lets a player manipulate or
place his own terrain is bound to create all kinds of balance issues. Again, fortifications might be balanced for
90% of the lists that would take them, but the 10% that are wildly imbalanced
are enough to ruin a tournament.

Third,
one of the deployments is short table edges.
This is so scary, because it puts certain armies at an immediate
disadvantage while greatly benefitting others.
Of the three issues, I feel this is the easiest to mitigate, especially
since most tournaments use long edge deployments for each scenario anyway
regardless of the alternatives.

In
summation, the things I listed have the potential to be OK if handled
absolutely perfectly, but if handled wrong could be a disaster. I highly doubt the risk is worth the reward,
but the allies and fortifications rules seem like something that the sales wing
of the company forced the design portion of the company to include. Top down game design from non-designers is
usually bad. And I’ll leave it at that
with my fingers crossed.

On
a positive note…

Many
of the rumors I thought would make Templars awesome are confirmed. Er, as confirmed as they could be at this
juncture.

Re-rolling ur misses, and sometimes ur wounds

Let’s
list the things that are stronger in 6th that Templars have the best
of already…

1. Terminators.
Ours are the same price as everyone else’s, shoot at vehicles better,
and fight in close combat better than everyone else’s. Oh yeah, power weapons are “confirmed” to be
AP3 last I heard. Game on.

2. Skimmers.
Our Typhoon speeders are cheaper than everyone else. And now they can get a cover save. This isn’t a huge upgrade, but if I’m reading
correctly they can go flat out, get a cover save, and shoot their weapons at
BS1. Fine by me. Two frag missiles at BS1 can still do some
decent damage to infantry. This is just
a strike upgrade.

3. Preferred Enemy. The re-roll of 1’s to wound is great, since
1’s are the only thing Thunderhammers don’t wound on. Since vehicles have weapon skill now, I also
assume this works on vehicles, though I wouldn’t be shocked if they word it to
say “non-vehicle” units or something to that effect.

4. Land Raiders.
4 Hull Points and the new vehicle damage chart means that the only thing
killing them quickly is a lot of melta.
This means that a Crusader will likely get to deliver it’s payload, and
a godhammer can shoot at range all day.
What long range weapons will someone bring that can reliably pop a Land
Raider now? It is pretty darn hard for a
Lascannon to do it since glances don’t mean much to a Land Raider anymore. I don’t know if that will be enough to get
people to bring Godhammers, but it might.

What
are my initial thoughts? Tough to
say. All the things, except the
Typhoons, that I mentioned are not cheap.
You could write a list with terminators and land raiders that is really
bad. Too many shiny toys. But in a tournament like NOVA, we’ve seen
kp/vp denial lists do rather well.

On
the other hand, I could also envision a list with three troops sitting in
dedicated transport Land Raiders just holding objectives all day with
Terminators providing shooting and counter charge duties. It would probably not be the ideal way to do
a BT list in 6th, but we have seen that 2 or 3 nearly indestructible
troop choices can be as good as 6 cheap ones.

8 comments:

I'm sure someone has already mentioned this to you, but a lot of the benefits you're describing here also appply to Blood Angels. Sure, there are a few differences, but all the same, it makes me happy as a Blood Angels player to see the new rules.

Well that is a pretty big advantage. I am confident that Preffered will be errataed to cc, as it only makes sense. Alternatively, BAs could get errataed so that Unleash Rage grants Preffered for the entire turn, in which case advantage: BAs.

One other thing to note though before we get TOO excited: My sources are warning me to not create too many lists for a couple weeks after 6th Edition drops. Our FAQ is going to be quite large and things are going to change. They won't elaborate, but they are implying some people won't be pleased by them.

I agree with Laeroth, a FAQ bomb is coming for everything and quickly. My Deep Strike list is just so much toast now. IMO, MVB is living in a dream world about NOVA with his idea of people "just being able to use their 5th Edition lists". Speaking of game breaking, if MVB does limit the fortifications too much, then I might have to bail out for my Necron Scythe list, always on the "zoom" with twin linked BS1 action at flat out. Or I could go with ~40% IG, including Hydras for anti-flyer firepower and using the Chimeras to transport my Initiates. We will see.